"The Rajiv Gandhi equity saving scheme will be liberalised to enable the first time investor to invest in mutual funds as well as listed shares and she can do so not in one year alone but in three successive years," he said. "The limit for investors wanting to invest in RGESS has been raised from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh," he added.

In a move that will bring cheer to many prospective home-owners, Chidambaram announced incentives for home loan borrowers. Chidambaram said that any person taking a first time home loan up to Rs 25 lakh during the financial year 2013-14 will be allowed an additional tax deduction of interest of up to Rs 1 lakh.

"A person taking a loan for his first home from a bank or a housing finance corporation up to Rs 25 lakh during the period 01-04-2013 to 31-03-2014 will be entitled to additional deduction of interest of up to Rs 1 lakh," he said.

"This will promote home ownership and give a fillip to a number of industries like steel, cement, brick, wood, glass etc. besides jobs to thousands of construction workers," he added.

On the issue of inflation-indexed funds, Chidambaram said, "In consultation with RBI, I propose to introduce instruments that will protect savings from inflation especially the savings of the poor and middle classes, these could be inflation-indexed bonds or inflation-indexed national security certificates," he said.

The structure and tenure of the instruments will be announced in due course, he added.

Chidambaram started his speech by reiterating the resolve of his government to cut expenditure and bring the Current Account Deficit back on track. He also pointed out how India is still the third fastest growing economy amongst the bigger countries.

As the speech progressed, the FM went on to reiterate UPA's pet goal of inclusive development. he subsequently announced many schemes & allocations for SC, ST, women, differently-abled and other schemes such as Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan & provided additional allocation for the food security plan.